Creative freedom can't be diluted: Dr Vinaya Vokkunda

Mysuru: The Akhila Bharatha Kannada Sahithya Sammelana ended on Sunday wiht a resounding call to end intolerance, attacks on freedom of speech and expression, communalism, fundamentalism, the selfie craze and protests against the Deepika Padukone starrer, Padmavathi.

Dr Vinaya Vokkunda speaking on intolerance and the murder of writer Gauri Lankesh and M.M. Kalburgi asked, "is freedom of speech and expression alive today? Have we remained humans, is democracy alive? Attack on freedom of speech and expression has become our tradition. We are in an era when we question if our people can tolerate the crude truth?" 
 

Speaking on protests against the movie Padmavati, she said, “there is nothing that creative media should not recreate. There are personal attacks on actors like Prakash Rai for speaking against intolerance and Sudeep for his view on GST.

This is fascism and cultural terrorism. 40 thinkers have returned their awards as a protest against intolerance. The protest at JNU was considered anti-national but when people celebrated the death of Gauri, was it not anti-national?”
 

Veeranna Dande said while drought and farmers' suicides are common in North Karnataka, the farmer suicides in Mysuru region are surprising. The government which holds such a big Sammelana must come up with programmes to save farmers, he said.

In the Kavighoshti, 24 poets including a 85-year-old man and two police officers presented works echoeing the attacks on Gauri Lankesh, communalism, GST, demonetisation, female infanticide and others. 

Mr Jayanth Kaykini said "expressing what we cannot narrate, through certain incidents is poetry. Literature and art is spirituality. Let us not become members of political parties and remain as independent conscious humans," he said. 
He regretted that gifts of technology like Whatsapp have created a virtual  world making humans mental slaves.